Tanya Shirley

Tanya Shirley (b 1976, Jamaica) has published two poetry collections, She Who Sleeps With Bones (2009) and The Merchant of Feathers (2014). Her poems also appear in several anthologies and have been translated into Polish and Spanish. She is a featured poet on www.poetryarchive.org and has read her poems and conducted writing workshops in Venezuela, Canada, the USA, England, Scotland and the Caribbean. Shirley was awarded an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland in the USA. She was a writer-in-residence twice at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, and is also a proud Cave Canem Fellow. Her second poetry collection, The Merchant of Feathers, was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature, Caribbean Award. In 2017, she was awarded a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Council of the Institute of Jamaica for her outstanding contribution in the field of Literature.